Writer's Block: Starstruck
Dec. 9th, 2011 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foolish_m0rtalGUYS, okay, I've been wondering when to tell you about this. I met DEAN KAMEN when he came to give a lecture at the dedication of our new computer science building.
For those who are not in engineering and are not familiar with Dean Kamen, he's an engineer and one of the foremost living inventors of our age who founded DEKA Research. He invented a safer and easier insulin delivery system AutoSyringe for diabetics, which was initially used to deliver drugs to premature babies, and he said with some brainstorming he went from serving a small percent of the population to a large portion.
He created a Stirling water purifier called the Slingshot that works without electricity. (It can be run on anything that burns. Some villages use cow dung, which is in abundance) He says that the story of David and Goliath taught him a very importatant lesson: that technology is cool. He said David was a little guy that had a big problem and used the application of simple technology to fix it. He said the little people are the ones who don't have access to clean drinking water, which is their big problem, and he just wants to give them a slingshot to help them take down their monster.
He created a prosthetic that could "pick up a raisin" (have very fine motor control) and "then pick up a grape" (have fine pressure control). It's called the Luke Arm (he confesses he loves Star Wars), and he showed us images and videos of people using it. He showed us a man using the prosthetic to eat a bowl of cereal. "You can't see it in the video," he said, "But the man's wife was standing beside him crying. That's the first time he's fed himself in nineteen years, she told me. So either we keep the prosthetic, or you keep Chuck."
He also created the FIRST robotics competition to give kids better role models than movie stars and actors and to inspire them to go into the fields of engineering and science. He also invented the Segway.
The students weren't allowed in the actual auditorium, which was for alumni and trustees/donors, but we were allowed to gather in the study room outside, where we have large flat screen tvs. Everyone who came to listen to him stopped at the open auditorium door for a few moments to see him speak in person and then went to sit down with us. His speech was broadcasted via speakers on every floor of the building, and it was dead silent. The room was full of students and some professors who thought it was unfair to bar students from entry, so they came out of the auditorium to sit with us.
Dean Kamen spoke for two hours, and it was quite an experience. He let us through the history of his inventions and why he decided to tackle those particular projects. The way he speaks is so unique. He cares about everything. He really cares about everything and thinks engineering should solely be used to fix the world's problems. He spoke of creating those new Coke machines (Coca-Cola Freestyle, I found out later) that make the drink right in front of you, so you can get any drinks you want from just one screen.
And he grimaced, because he only did that for Coke so that they would help him distribute his clean water machines among villages that needed clean flowing water.
He speaks with such utter enthusiasm and with an offhand reference to physics and mathematical concepts he expects us to know (I appreciate that he didn't try to talk down to us and explain them all) and how he uses such simple building blocks to create solutions to complex problems. "And then we did that, and it was easy," he kept saying with a huge grin. It was wonderful. There were people in that room who got teary-eyed (I will neither confirm nor deny that I was one of them) because he is just amazing and quite a moving lecturer.
The students rushed the auditorium after his lecture was finished, and we got in line to take pictures with him and get him to sign autographs. ("It's like you're a movie star," one idiot trustee said, and we're like, really? Did you not hear what he said about giving kids better role models who are NOT movie stars?) So I got to tell him all about how I heard about his work when I was in middle school and how that inspired me to be an engineer.
Yeah, I got a picture with him! That's me (I blurred out my face as per my custom) with Dean Kamen. Eeee! Yes, I have short hair now. And no, I didn't specifically wear a suit to his lecture; my group had a presentation with the Department of Defence right before. They're funding our engineering thesis project on using mixed virtual reality (and multi-sensory feedback) to reduce the severity of phantom limb pain in amputees. Since Dean did a project on a better prosthetic, we talked about the project a little.
It was so strange that he's the person that started and was at the end of my academic career in engineering. I called up all my friends afterwards and told them all about how I'd shaken his hand twice and got a picture with him. It was such an honour to meet him. I found some of his Luke Arm lecture online, if you're interested. Call me a rampant engineer, but I started watching this and still gasped and clapped my hands and began tearing up again.
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For those who are not in engineering and are not familiar with Dean Kamen, he's an engineer and one of the foremost living inventors of our age who founded DEKA Research. He invented a safer and easier insulin delivery system AutoSyringe for diabetics, which was initially used to deliver drugs to premature babies, and he said with some brainstorming he went from serving a small percent of the population to a large portion.
He created a Stirling water purifier called the Slingshot that works without electricity. (It can be run on anything that burns. Some villages use cow dung, which is in abundance) He says that the story of David and Goliath taught him a very importatant lesson: that technology is cool. He said David was a little guy that had a big problem and used the application of simple technology to fix it. He said the little people are the ones who don't have access to clean drinking water, which is their big problem, and he just wants to give them a slingshot to help them take down their monster.
He created a prosthetic that could "pick up a raisin" (have very fine motor control) and "then pick up a grape" (have fine pressure control). It's called the Luke Arm (he confesses he loves Star Wars), and he showed us images and videos of people using it. He showed us a man using the prosthetic to eat a bowl of cereal. "You can't see it in the video," he said, "But the man's wife was standing beside him crying. That's the first time he's fed himself in nineteen years, she told me. So either we keep the prosthetic, or you keep Chuck."
He also created the FIRST robotics competition to give kids better role models than movie stars and actors and to inspire them to go into the fields of engineering and science. He also invented the Segway.
The students weren't allowed in the actual auditorium, which was for alumni and trustees/donors, but we were allowed to gather in the study room outside, where we have large flat screen tvs. Everyone who came to listen to him stopped at the open auditorium door for a few moments to see him speak in person and then went to sit down with us. His speech was broadcasted via speakers on every floor of the building, and it was dead silent. The room was full of students and some professors who thought it was unfair to bar students from entry, so they came out of the auditorium to sit with us.
Dean Kamen spoke for two hours, and it was quite an experience. He let us through the history of his inventions and why he decided to tackle those particular projects. The way he speaks is so unique. He cares about everything. He really cares about everything and thinks engineering should solely be used to fix the world's problems. He spoke of creating those new Coke machines (Coca-Cola Freestyle, I found out later) that make the drink right in front of you, so you can get any drinks you want from just one screen.
And he grimaced, because he only did that for Coke so that they would help him distribute his clean water machines among villages that needed clean flowing water.
He speaks with such utter enthusiasm and with an offhand reference to physics and mathematical concepts he expects us to know (I appreciate that he didn't try to talk down to us and explain them all) and how he uses such simple building blocks to create solutions to complex problems. "And then we did that, and it was easy," he kept saying with a huge grin. It was wonderful. There were people in that room who got teary-eyed (I will neither confirm nor deny that I was one of them) because he is just amazing and quite a moving lecturer.
The students rushed the auditorium after his lecture was finished, and we got in line to take pictures with him and get him to sign autographs. ("It's like you're a movie star," one idiot trustee said, and we're like, really? Did you not hear what he said about giving kids better role models who are NOT movie stars?) So I got to tell him all about how I heard about his work when I was in middle school and how that inspired me to be an engineer.
Yeah, I got a picture with him! That's me (I blurred out my face as per my custom) with Dean Kamen. Eeee! Yes, I have short hair now. And no, I didn't specifically wear a suit to his lecture; my group had a presentation with the Department of Defence right before. They're funding our engineering thesis project on using mixed virtual reality (and multi-sensory feedback) to reduce the severity of phantom limb pain in amputees. Since Dean did a project on a better prosthetic, we talked about the project a little.
It was so strange that he's the person that started and was at the end of my academic career in engineering. I called up all my friends afterwards and told them all about how I'd shaken his hand twice and got a picture with him. It was such an honour to meet him. I found some of his Luke Arm lecture online, if you're interested. Call me a rampant engineer, but I started watching this and still gasped and clapped my hands and began tearing up again.
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